Reminds me of something I skimmed in an article I was rushing through (ah, term papers) about some spinal medical condition for which the health care providers used to insist to the patients that they couldn’t be feeling as much pain as they were describing. Luckily that one got sorted out.
Perhaps the next time you see the bad doctor, you can accidentally slam the filing cabinet door as he reaches inside.
Awake and alert? Yikes!
I racked (or wracked, depending on the dictionary used) my brain to come up with some examples of successful med-mal suits from my former job. (1) a woman who was allergic to some drug, and got prescribed that drug or given it by accident, who suffered some kind of ear problem. Not a hearing loss, but a hearing change. She focused on the fact that she could no longer go to the symphony or even enjoy recorded music. Settled out of court for $25K.
(2) A man whose IV (during a cardiac catheterization) caused nerve damage, according to him, that made his left hand subject to spasms and trembling so he found himself dropping things like coffee cups. Claimed loss of job (he was a truck driver, 59 years old) because of this. Awarded $300K by jury. It wasn’t even his dominant hand!
(3) a woman who upon donating blood was told, erroneously as it turned out, that she had HIV. She sued, even though there was no damage at all. (Sure, she was upset, emotional distress and all that. Even though according to her testimony she knew all along there was no way she could have HIV.) Now, I believe that case got dismissed for lack of a cause of action–but if she could find a lawyer, you can find a lawyer. As far as finding one, what Ivylass said.
I listed settlements but the money is not really the point. The point is that the doctor’s insurance company will have to cough it up and will raise his rates or cancel him. If he can’t get insurance he can’t practice. Also, at least in Colorado, when drs. are sued the board of medical examiners takes a really hard look at them. I would assume that’s the same everywhere.
Anyway, best wishes for an uneventful surgery and a quick recovery.
I’ve had surgery while “awake and alert” (On my face - even described it on a thread somewhere around here). Local anesthetics are quite good. Felt no pain at all during the surgery.
Going forward, I prefer to avoid surgery but if I must have it, I’d be willing to go the “awake” route - in fact, I think I’m likely to prefer it.
Sorry about your problems. That is an awful series of events.
I would want to point out some things here though. Full disclosure: I am someone who believes that he is a very good doc but who has made mistakes, good faith errors. No doc hasn’t. Usually the systems in place have prevented my mistakes from causing harm, sometimes dumb luck. I’ve had a mistake cause harm, fortunately not serious harm. I’ve been part of the system of double checks that prevented someone else’s mistake from causing harm. I have been sued and settled. That was for a bad outcome but with no mistake. I did nothing wrong there, but couldn’t risk a jury ruling against me anyway even if unlikely to, and putting my family’s future on the line with a judgement over my policy limits. I hate our system that made me settle when I didn’t do anything wrong and am disgusted with myself for not having the kahones to fight anyway. So with that said …
Doctor one may not have listened well, but didn’t really do anything all that bad despite your horrific outcome. You had wart under the nail. He correctly told you that those are hard to treat and prescibed Aldara, which actually is used for this purpose fairly commonly and works modestly well (it is called unapproved use of an approved medication and is done all the time, heck in peds we rely on it). Sometime after that visit you developed an abscess which progressed to an osteo or the unapparent osteo that was already there came to the surface. Where he dropped the ball was that he blamed a lot of pain on a wart or didn’t listen too well about the degree of pain. Does this mistake mean that he is an overall quack deserving of being removed from the profession and having all he owns taken away? Well those thing may or may not be true. But I wouldn’t conclude that based on one mistake on one day out of a long career of hudreds of decisions made everyday. A complaint via your insurance company will result in an investigation with a QA board (I serve on one for our group). These boards are not just for show. They look for ways to improve care in the future. Often things are improvements on the system. If it is a one time mistake, all that might happen is the comment that he missed this and that he should improve his commuinication skills (for example, listening to you better and informing you about what to expect and when to call back if that wasn’t happening - severe redness and swelling was not to be expected), but we keep tabs on patterns, monitor future behavior, and repeated complaints get more severe actions including revoking privleges.
Next doctor’s office has a problem that is too common. I personally hate PAs seeing patients for initial consults. Follow-ups for routine issues in a limited range by a PA who clearly knows when they do not know, is fine, but if someone is seeing the specialist then they should see the specialist at least for tyhe initial diagnosis, that’s why you are there. And this PA didn’t recognize that he didn’t recognize what was going on. You deserve a response from that doctor and they need to rethink how they use PAs. You didn’t see the derm even after that X-Ray was taken and you were sent on to a hand specialist!?! No question that at that point the PA should be realizing that he misdiagnosed the problem and getting the doc in pronto. Doc shoulda been on the phone getting you into a hands doc that day or the next am. Another inquiry lettter to the insurance carrier and directly to the doctor’s office is appropriate. Keep it calm and present the facts. There were “opportunities for improvement” here. Either the PA is being given too much independence or is taking too much upon himself. In either case that NEEDS to change.
As to legal recourse. Sure any one can always sue. But the point of med-mal legal practice isn’t to be an action of useful change, it is to make lawyers oodles of money. This one wouldn’t do that - some lawyer might take it hoping for a quick settlement, in and out - but few would invest the resources to take it all the way to trial.
You want the docs to learn from this mistake. To be an agent of change. Well a couple of possibilities:
The docs are arrogant assholes who do not recognize that they have anything to learn. This is sometimes the case. If so being sued won’t change that. A quick settlement won’t change that. Being investigated by their own and pressured by peers, that might do it some … maybe.
The docs are overall good people who want to do good work, but each made mistakes. Had a bad day or got sloppy or inattentive with a very busy day. This is most often the case. These docs feel bad already and are already recognizing they fucked up. Make sure that they have looked at how they do things and responded in a way that won’t admit a mistake (with our legal climate, they won’t say that) but says that things have been improved upon anyway. Lawsuits won’t get them to improve any more than straightforward communication and inquiries through extant QA mechanisms.
I hope this a useful perspective to those who want to make doctors’ “children bleed.”
DSeid: Thanks for the input. I’ve been accused of being someone who doesn’t like to make waves. I’m out four weeks of my vacation time before my short term kicks in. They (the docs) owe me that. But how can you sue for that?
What is the price of my pain and suffering? I dunno. I’d venture to say its somewhere between a nickel and a billion dollars. As I’ve said, I’d like to see sanctions or reprimands over money. I want justice to be served. I will take your suggestions under serious consideration.
Tomorrow’s the big day. Now I’m gonna pop a couple Vicodins and watch #1 SoCal finish off Michigan for the championship, then try to sleep…shit, I’ll probably end up watching the Orange Bowl too.
Oh my god, that is truly horrible. I am so disgusted and horrified by this, my own quack doctor misdiagnosis seems small in comparison. I found out about three weeks ago after having been treated for asthma for 2 1/2 years, by twist of fate (quack doctor unavailable, new doctor son seeing appointments for him), that I do not have asthma at all, but instead untreated worsening anemia, somehow missed, and now at the point, any lower, blood transfusion for me. Three weeks of proper treatment and I feel a whole hella lot better, though have a ways to go. Oh and he says to me, "Oh, and I wouldn’t mention it to your students (I teach health and fitness classes) about this … I’d just tell them you were taking vitamins or something to explain your newfound energy levels. Uh huh…okay. Oh I am so disgusted right now.
Talk to the bar association and a lawyer, just in case. Something this clearcut, they may take it.
E72521,
I really am sorry to hear that you are going to lose a part of the finger. And other posters are absolutely correct, you don’t deserve to lose it, and again, it is a Big Deal TM.
But also, I want to commend you for your maturity and willingness to see this thing from both sides. I think that DSeid makes a great point. In hindsight, everything seems so blatantly obvious, but in the here and now, these things are much more difficult to resolve. As an EMT-B and hopefully future doctor, with a much more limited scope of treatments than what any doctor has, I have to admit to having made far more judgemenent errors than I wish to admit. Luckily, I’ve always made them in the confines of a system where those errors were either for practice or under the watchful eyes of somebody else who corrected it. One thing that I can promise you is that nobody you interacted with in this whole ordeal wanted this to happen. Nobody works hard all through under grad, studies their ass off for the MCAT’s, studies their ass off through med-school, works their ass off through internship and residency, and shows up to their office everyday because it is just another way to make a living. There are certainly easier means to that end. I can promise you that these people do care, not just due to their own self interest.
So, I would suggest that you do what you can to make sure that this never happens again to a patient of any of these physicians, or that a PA does not try to outreach their capabilities. I don’t know how you would feel about this, but have you considered contacting any of these people in person after your surgery? Just update them on your outcome, and where you feel appropriate, let them know the pain that you have suffered underneath their negligent care. I think that this provides a better opportunity for avoiding this in the future than any other route.
If somebody loses a license or job over this, what happens next? Do all of their patients just jump to another practicioner, even more rushed and looking to triage critical patients compared to somebody with just a little wart on a pinky? Do you dump these patients on a fresh-out-of-med-school intern, who has never had the opportunity to make a mistake before, and just use them until they make a mistake, and then you find some other person to deal with the same patient?
Compared with some of the responses of this thread, I think that a little more reason is called for when considering medical mistakes. The population isn’t getting any younger, and medical schools aren’t getting any easier to get into or bigger. When you consider the expense of medical care in this country and how it is already unavailable to so many, consider the reprocussions of, “I’d vote for this doc to cough up.”
Wow, I’m at a loss. My day had been super-shitty and then I read your thread…puts things in persepctive. I can only echo the others advice to sue the pants off this guy. If nothing else it’ll make it less likely he/she does this again to someone else.
E7,
By now you have had your procedure. On behalf of us all, I hope it went well and that your recovery is uneventful with no surprises on path review.
Please give us a progress report when you are up to it.
All our best.
It’s worse than that! How the heck is he going to do <dr evil> “One million dollars” </de> now? His life is over!
Seriously. Call a lawyer. The settlement won’t be large, but there will be one.
I hope you’re doing okay E7
I lived! Friday night and Saturday were pure hell, but today I’m off the vicodin and just taking aleve. They only took off the end bone. Tissue biopsies showed benign cyst and verruca. Bone biopsy is pending. Good news: My supplimental cancer insurance is paying me $1500 for the surgery and $1000 for the diagnosis of osteomyelitis. More later when I can type easier…
Glad you’re feeling okay. Let us know what the lawyer says.
I’m glad you’re doing okay E7. Keep us updated!
Glad to know that you’re doing well, E72521.
I hope that you still plan to call a lawyer. While I don’t think that people should sue over everything that goes wrong, a message desperately needs to be sent here. That message is: “Doctors, LISTEN TO YOUR PATIENTS!!! You may have spent umpteen years in med school to learn about the human body, but we have spent our entire lives in our OWN bodies, so when we say something’s wrong with us, chances are, we know what we’re talking about! We need your help to find out what IS wrong, not just pat answers and condescension.”
E7,
Recover well and quickly!
A benign cyst? What kind of benign cyst at the end of the fifith digit? Was the cyst eroding into the bone? Do your hand docs feel that this and the wart breaking down the skin barrier set up the osteomyelitis or that there was no osteo and that the benign cyst gave the appearence of osteo? (I’m a pediatrician, this all outside of my expertise.) Let us know what the bone biopsy shows too when you get it.
Mayflower, if you think that another lawsuit is going to get the docs who habitually do not listen to suddenly start to, then you are a bit naive. If you think that another lawsuit will prevent doctors from ever fucking up in the future, then you have swallowed the lawyers tripe hook line and sinker. A lawsuit is about money and revenge, and in either order. Lawsuits do NOT improve the quality of care, on the contrary the threat of lawsuits looming over docs heads makes for worse medical care. This doesn’t mean that negligence does not occur and that harmed individuals shouldn’t be compensated, but do not fool yourself into thinking that you are improving care by sueing. You aint.
DSeid, very nice assessment of these sorts of situations in general. You’re my new hero!
E7, get well quick. There’s little worse than being in pain and feeling discounted at the same time.
DSeid, I’m not so stupid as to think that all doctors everywhere are going to see the light because of a lawsuit. But neither do I believe that every lawsuit is just a matter of getting rich or getting even. If a doctor fucks up because he was such a damn know-it-all that he couldn’t believe that a mere mortal human (such as a patient) might know that there was more wrong than His Highness the Doctor could find in his 30 second examination, then hitting him in his heart (AKA his wallet) may at least get him to wake up, if for no other reason than to keep his money to himself. And if you cause the loss of a body part because of that arrogance, then you owe recompence.
Sorry if I have a hard time dredging up sympathy for those poor beleaguered souls who get pissed off when you show up at the ER instead of going during regular office hours (“You’ve been sick this long and are just now coming to the ER?” “Yes, you stupid fucker, I have, but this little ol’ hurricane had me holed up for three days, should I have braved the floodwaters to keep you from being inconvenienced?” Yes, this happened to me, only, regrettably, I left out the “stupid fucker” part.) or who make you wait naked in their icy examining rooms for 30 minutes (with only one other patient before you) only to give you a brief once-over, write a scrip, and dash out, with your attempts at questions floating behind him as the door closes. (Maybe you can enlighten me–how come it takes him so long between patients? If there’s only one patient ahead of me and he’s only taking 2-3 minutes per patient, why do I have to wait so long in the rooms? Is it smoke breaks? Poker games?)
Actually, one good way to get a bad doc to quit the field is to sue him/her for malpractice. Win or lose, the doc’s malpractice insurance rates will skyrocket, and he/she will have a very tough time switching jobs – who wants to hire a malpractice-tainted doc?
Enough malpractice suits – no matter what the final outcome* – and the doc becomes a pariah. The state medical board may not remove his/her license, but he/she becomes unemployable, at least when it comes to direct contact with patients is concerned. And that’s one of your motivations, right?